Humpy top seed for women's World Championship

May 21, 2004 19:15 IST

Top seeded Grandmaster Koneru Humpy will start her campaign against Cecile Van Der Merwe of South Africa in the first round of the women's World Chess Championship that gets underway in Elista (Kalmykia) in Russia, at the City Chess complex on Friday.

Women Grandmasters Dronavalli Harika and Subbaraman Meenakshi have tough nuts to crack in the first round of the championship as they have been pitted against higher rated International Masters, Viktorija Cmilyte of Lithuania and Iweta Radziewicz of Poland, respectively.

The 64-players knock-out event will witness some of the best women players in action over next 19 days, fighting it out for the winner's purse of US $60,000 (approximately Rs 2.7 million).

Grandmaster Maya Chiburdanidze of Georgia is the only former champion in the fray following the absence of defending champion Zhu Chen of China and her compatriot and former champion Xie Jun.

The stakes are high right from the first round as the 32 losers to bow out will get US $3750 each while the rest will advance to the next round with an assured prize of US $5,500. The total prize pool is US $450,000.

The championship will be played on knock-out basis with a two-game mini match in each round except the final, which will be of four games.